Chapter Text

Izuku wasn’t sure why he was around.

Right?

Crazy to say it out loud, so he didn’t say it out loud, so he kept his mouth shut. He tasted sandpaper. He heard voices, he felt someone rub his back. It was soothing. It was quiet. Izuku, briefly, wondered if anyone could be capable of such smoothness—quietness, the gentleness that came with care. It was a foreign concept with foreign teeth and too-big hands and glinting eyes, sharp, gullible, or just mean.

Izuku wasn’t sure why he was around. He wasn’t sure why he was kept, not for the heroes. He wasn’t some kingpin—the scavengers weren’t chained without him. They would be fine, sure, and so would he, but there had to be a purpose to this.

Trapped animal, scared barbs, a scared little kid.

(Worthless.)

The scavengers kept him because he was Machi’s favorite. That was what Milestone had said all those years ago. It’s why you’re the favorite child of the family. And Machi had taken Izuku in. And Izuku was a good kid when he needed to be, he burned and broke and snapped and seethed and obeyed and orchestrated, he made it work, he made it okay. It wasn’t like he was helpless. Not really. Izuku knew that people had his name on a deadman list, right, blacked out, splotched, underlined, written down and known. He wasn’t weak to them—his quirk was enough of a threat.

The hand on his back went up and down, side to side, over and over. It was warm. Izuku stayed where he was, not paying attention. He thought about broken bones, biting through his arm.

There was an icepack on his head. He wasn’t sure how it was staying there, balancing, but he didn’t move, and it didn’t fall, and so it was harmonious in the estranged way everything was for him. The hand on his back was calm. It was practiced. Izuku wondered if it meant anything. He didn’t know. The scavengers would say no, it doesn’t, so it probably didn’t. He stopped wondering.

Distantly, he ran his tongue across the roof of his mouth again. The backs of his teeth.

It was scarred. Izuku wondered where it came from. Maybe the lab? He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure. It was common, a little disconnected. The information rattled around in his head and he couldn’t get any of it to connect. It blurred and moved, stuck out like sore thumbs, made his teeth hurt like his hands and wrists and gums and teeth and vocal cords, and, well, everything. Everything hurt.

“Akatani,” Aizawa said, very quietly, and his hand was resting on Izuku’s back and it was almost nice, almost great. But nothing was great. This wasn’t home. This wasn’t where he needed to be.

“No,” Izuku said again.

He kept saying it, because the heroes actually listened when he said no, they heard and obeyed because they were weak-willed like that. Never seen a kid’s blood, not like Izuku’s blood, and they didn’t know how to gully and gut a child ‘cause they weren’t mass murderers or gamblers or scientists or arena fighters or villains or vigilante.

They were heroes.

They were people, on the light, in the light—they wouldn’t get it.

Izuku could stay here a while, long enough to call out like a weak baby. Like a steady thrum. The nurses’ office was sterile and quiet and unbusy. No one in it but Aizawa, Shuuzenji, and Izuku. His eyes hurt, still watering. The wetness fell down his face every other minute.

(I-Z-U-K-U.)

His quirk was a spasming muscle, so loud and so vibrant. The cuff on his wrist was fucking useless. Placebo effect? Izuku didn’t know. He, actually, didn’t care.

Are you there? Izuku wondered, scavenging in his mind, looking for something other than the overwhelming awfulness of Nedzu’s perspective. Splinter? There was no reply. He couldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t see Splinter’s world, couldn’t hear the man’s quirk right now. Blotted out, not on the map, not within reach. He wondered where the man was, if it was opium or valium or menthol cigarettes or alcohol or weed or something else, this time, if Splinter found a new fix. Splinter? Izuku asked, sent the call—couldn’t see, couldn’t think. He wanted to go home. He wanted to make this work. He wanted to fucking leave.

It was just one of those things, you know? He always wanted to leave. It was worse now, strong, purgatory. He needed to leave. He never went along with a secondary plan, though. Once he made his decision he stuck to it. Once the scavengers took him in, he didn’t want for anything else. No mom, no dad, no nothing. Just him and the ring. Just him and his dreams, tearing hands and sharper teeth. Izuku sometimes dreamed of things he had no name for, no skin in the game.

The urge was potent and strong and cruel, and Izuku wasn’t strong or potent or cruel enough, but with a quirk he could figure it out, right.

It would be better if someone would answer, though.

There was that awful disconnecting feeling all over him. He didn’t feel present. Something lesser, like shadows and their counterparts. His hands wouldn’t move, and they were limp, and Aizawa was silent again and his hand was smoothing out the awkwardness in Izuku’s spine.

Slipping away, staying, not staying, or leaving again.

Izuku needed to leave.

Tapping out mentally wasn’t good enough, though, and he needed to fix this. He needed to leave. Fifteen days were too many, already, and he couldn’t let it go further. His quirk stretched out for kilometers, miles, thousands of stances outwards—he saw and understood and heard and knew. He had to know. He made it so he would always know, like oranges and death and collapsed ceilings and fight rings and three fingers and broken jaws and bite marks and the stray dogs and the stray kids.

“Kid,” Aizawa said, very quietly, after enough time passed. His voice was calm, “Could you open your eyes for me?”

Izuku ignored him, focused on the ache in his mouth and the way his head throbbed like a bad drum. Mercy kill, mercy, please, oh, god, please have mercy, please just end it, please, mercy. Enough time was vague, though, because nothing was ever enough. It was too much or too little and Izuku wasn’t cut out for it. He wasn’t.

He wasn’t cut out for heroes. Izuku was a flight-risk. He was a troubled kid, a complicated thing. He didn’t know if they knew about all the details—the lab, the mother, the father, the worlds he saw and were part of, the people, the houses he knew, the men he killed, the children he watched die, the people he was kind to, the people he was cruel to, the bones he replaced, the eyes he stole, the eyes that were stolen—he didn’t know. He saw things. He knew things. A kid like him had to know things. He saw quirks and souls and other worlds and colors and places from everyone else’s livelihoods. Their positions. Their eyes. Their worlds. But he wasn’t cut out for heroism or life or domestic stuff or glee or children-stuff, activities, art, care. Izuku wasn’t cut out for it.

(Give me all your half-assed excuses, and then leave. Don’t you know how easy it would be, kid, to leave? To say you’re sorry and then leave anyway?)

He blinked slowly, wetness spilling. “I’m not Akatani.”

“I know,” The hero said, calmly.

Izuku squeezed his hands, flexing the weak muscles. “I’m not Mikumo Akatani.”

Everything about this was wrong, everything about this was fucked, everything about this was a trick. Animal, dog eat dog, the death of the long haul. He hated it. He hated them. He hated himself, too, mostly the people. He hated. Mostly just wanted out. Less like hate, more like—

Aizawa was slow to understand. It was like he couldn’t grasp it, just saying the same old things, because what else would he know? He wasn’t Izuku. He wasn’t a stray kid with stray hairs and stray bones and less than fortunate chances.

The man breathed out, “I know.”

Izuku’s eyes watered. He could hear Nedzu say it, hear the rat say a lot of things. He could see the fluorescent lab lights in his mind, now, see the groups of creatures—small and white and not so intelligent—and he could see Nedzu, see right between black pupils and colored scars. He couldn’t make sense of it. His own lab was kinder than the one the principal had originated from. Bitterness, sharpness. A trap—eyes, swallowing, all-knowing, sentient. A quirk that was more aware than basic instincts. Izuku wished he hadn’t met the principal’s gaze.

Like a ghost, a creature not yet undone by people. Or maybe fully undone. That’s not me. It wasn’t easy to decide. Izuku licked his lip, made the cracked skin raw and wet with his saliva, “That’s not my name.”

“It’s not,” Aizawa agreed, near silently. A pause. “Nedzu shouldn’t have called you that.”

Loose tongue, unready, unwilling. Izuku wasn’t made for this, he was made for the ring and the ringleaders and blood money that he and his opponents bled for.

“Yeah,” He mumbled, uselessly, worthlessly. Daring, now, he felt. “You shouldn’t have, either.”

There was a long silence.

The hand on his back stopped moving, but only for a moment, just a second. “I shouldn't have,” Aizawa conceded resolutely, no louder than before. His voice was like a knife under Izuku’s ribs, twisting and dragging. He sounded genuine. He sounded real. “You’re right. I’m sorry, kid, I shouldn’t have called you that.”

It was unreasonable for the heroes. I never gave any of you my name. Izuku had a name. He refused to give it up. He refused to share it. But he had one. The heroes just didn’t know it yet. He didn’t want them to know it.

(Aizawa had said it before, in the hospital.)

He thought about Mikumo. He thought about the cold, freezing, injured kid. He thought about December. He thought about Jill and Splinter and every other scavenger refusing to help him find a place for Mikumo’s corpse to rest. Three hours in an alleyway, cold, snowed in, icy. Useless. Three hours. Izuku seeing the world from Mikumo, seeing it and struggling, teeth chattering.

Deep breaths in—

(Mikumo Akatani was a kid killed by the system.)

And it was flashing lights, police sirens and grabby hands and greedy faces and cut-down, cut-up lucky fucks who wanted more than they could get. Machi’s people, her ranges, her kingdoms, her eyes. She was deeper than any sea. She was merciful to her own, merciless to the others. Izuku saw red, saw blood and guts and death and doom and flashing lights and his father’s smoke and the fire’s smoke and the world’s end and the people’s quirks, their ups and downs, their means to an end. Izuku crying under his bed, sobbing, and the world flashing in red and blue and blood as his mom broke plates and his father was dragged away. Izuku did as he was asked, as he was told. He was a good listener. He was a good fighter, a good thing to keep—a good investment, because he made money and didn’t complain. Blood. Blood money. Izuku’s whitened hair, blood showing through the curls.

“It’s not my name,” Izuku mumbled again, very weakly. His eyes hurt. His head hurt. It hurt so fucking bad, and his hands curled, and he wrapped his arms around his stomach and didn’t open his eyes. “It’s not.”

“Okay,” Aizawa replied, unbothered, without a hint of judgment.

(Do you need new eyes, Izuku?)

The lab. The mixed messages. The bloodman. The abandoned apartments and warehouses and docks and rings. The villains. The heroes. The people. The kids. The damaged goods. The broken ones who were still sold for full price. The scavengers. The strong. The weak. The dead. The dying. The hurt. The madmen, the maddest, the wild things that lived in the solutions in the long tube-like tanks.

What are they? Izuku asked before. The madman had told him not to worry about it.

So Izuku didn’t.

When his heart flatlined in the labs, he never stayed, his body was here in one room and his mind came back to life only a few seconds later—designed, adjusted, taught, made. Looking, watching, opening his mouth when rain came so he could get a taste. Hydration. Like plants; he needed water, sunlight, and love. Without any of it, he wilted, started falling. Sickness was a disease. The rot spread. The names of dead children were engraved into his frontal lobe, written there in scripture he couldn’t erase or burn out with any hot pokers.

Izuku saw flashes of Nedzu’s world, of the quirk. Intelligence. High Specs. A creature with a sentient quirk and a strong will and a kind of sentience that trapped Izuku’s quirk like an insect with drawn-lines on a piece of paper. His hands spasmed, as did his quirk, and he called out for Splinter again. A blue tablet, another pill, another memory. There was no call back.

He sobbed, hitched his breaths.

“Why did he do that?” Izuku asked, wetly, and his voice was cracked down the center like he was a fucking little kid. His breaths rattled, couldn’t fucking think to shut up, “Why’d he trap me like that?”

—

Izuku was staring down the barrel of a gun. He didn’t know why or how. He forgot all about that, by now. The world was quiet and Yokohama was quieter, and he needed to get this job done. He was staring down the barrel of a gun and he didn’t know why or how. He didn’t really need to know either of those things.

He just was.

Thirteen year olds should never be staring down the barrel of a gun.

He never really knew why he would do this, how he would get into this position as much as he did, but he knew he was good at it. He was really fucking good at it, and it was important for him to be good at what he did.

The kid leaned forwards, heard his heart hammer deep in his chest.

Something was wrong with him. The doctor had said he was evolving, that he was turning into a perfect creation, and that—

(Oh, you really are my kid.)

“Hey,” He whispered.

The man holding the gun took a step backwards, so violent and so very scared. Izuku knew why he was scared. He knew why, of course he did. It wasn’t everyday that you realized the kid you were about to kill was actually a ransom-owned vigilante, a development that had sharper teeth than you, a child who had a quirk you heard of in rumors, never in truth.

Rumors were the reason that so many things got done. They were the reason behind so many crimes and acts and raids. There was no way to stop it. To monitor or micromanage. Izuku was a product of his environment, he was made to be a certain way. The hunger guided him. The world did. He remembered exactly what his job was, how many freckles he used to have on his back before the scars covered it all up. He remembered what his mom used to call him. He remembered the park he used to play at. He remembered another kid he used to play with. He started this shit when he was eight, it had been five years, he was still alive, he was still here.

The rumors hadn’t gotten him killed yet. The rumors wouldn't kill him. They would kill several others, though.

Rumors ruled the streets. It made things get done. It made things better. It made things worse. Rumors were the reason Izuku was alive and why he was running after people like it was that or nothing, just a void, just a dead end and some dead bodies to match. Rumors made him. They gave him a name. They gave all the scavengers names, too. Izuku just so happen to be the name he liked the most.

Izuku stepped forwards with him, his thirteen year old body aching in all the wrong places. His wrists, his spine, his ankles, his neck, his mouth, his eyes, his tongue, his head. Everything hurt. He was thirteen. He was going to die tonight.

This man was going to kill him.

(This man was supposed to be killed by me.)

The metal was cold, so cold. He liked it. He knew what he did and didn’t, he saw a huge difference in every life he led, every path he took. Machi made sure of it. His quirk made sure of it. The blood in his mouth was a warning sign that he took seriously. The scavengers told him to kill this man. Izuku was staring down the barrel of a gun, silver and grey. It hadn’t gone off yet.

“Hey,” Izuku said again, and instead of staring down the gun, he felt it press into the right side of his forehead. He smiled softly, so easily—his heart thundered like a freight train. “This is the part where you pull the trigger.”

The silence was much louder than a gunshot.

Izuku stared at the killer, the one who held the gun. He tipped his head towards, the tip pressing into his skin. Dainty, cold. “Do you need me to count to three with you?”

One, two, three—

The man’s hands were shaking. It only took a second before the stranger recoiled, bolted. Izuku stared after him, breathed in. The alley was long. It would only take a moment to catch up to him. Fear rippled outwards and stole his breath away. He wouldn’t get fed tonight if he didn’t follow.

So he did, and he chased.

—

The long story short was that they went back to the apartment. Izuku just shook and shuddered in the nurses’ office until it grew too worrisome for any of the staff to actually tolerate or feel comfortable in letting a continuation occur. Izuku had been shaking violently, hadn’t been willing to eat or drink. Part of him had wanted to. The rest of him had wanted to leave, run fast. Shuuzenji had tried her best to soothe him, as all doctors did—foul or not—but she hadn’t had much luck. Few did, in this situation, because Izuku would rather vanish mentally than be around for a physical shut down.

“It hurts,” He had cried to Shuuzenji, a rarity and something Izuku wouldn’t have done otherwise.

Sentient quirks were loud and overbearing. They were painful. They were dangerous and smart and could always tell when Izuku was prying them apart, their very story and very function. Sentient quirks could fight back in a way others couldn’t. And that was terrifying. Because Izuku had never fought quirks in dreams before, he had chased them and they had chased him, but they never killed him, and he never really killed them, either.

He couldn’t just say that though. He couldn’t cry and weep about how his quirk wasn’t suppressed and how Nedzu’s quirk had no bounds and how he walked right into a trap like a stupid fucking mouse to eat cheese to get his neck fucking snapped in the metal wire—

(They hear it, the hell clash, the bustling panic of metal and teeth.)

—SNAP?

And the very idea had made him cry harder, full blown sobbing, and Shuuzenji wasn’t trained to deal with mental breakdowns like that—but Izuku had been desperate, he had been scared. He had never been scared like that before. Not even with the bloodman, or his father, or Machi, or with the gun to his head, or with the vigilantes who called him a pawn or a plaything or anything like that.

He had denied Inui’s presence—no, no, no, no, no—denied and sobbed, and begged and pleaded and no one had known what he had been saying please for and Izuku hadn’t offered any coherent clarification.

Izuku had just pleaded, hands curled and clawed together, eyes spilling and burning, head throbbing and the lights brightening and the world burning and the people confusing him, losing him. He had wrapped his arms around himself at some point, boiling and brawling and fighting his own stomach. He had vomited twice. Aizawa had held his hair back the second time, vibrant, and the world had blended together in a mess of colors and sounds and quirks and common phrases, useless phrases.

Shuuzenji had convinced him to stay on the bed. Izuku had stayed, ankles locked together, all cognitive function replaced with watery cries. She had given him water, an ice pack, and then Tylenol.

It had made him freeze. It had made him sob harder, claw at his palms, drag his skin up and down and up and down and—

“Kid,” Aizawa had been urgent. “Don’t.”

A mess. Because kids like him were supposed to be good but not to or for strangers. And kids like him were sick all the time and wrong all the time and scared to the point of hurting themselves and others. Like Izuku. Because that was what Izuku was. He was good at what he did. Why would he trade it for a bunch of heroes? Street kids died. They just did. It was life. He knew it better than anyone. He was one stray kid, and this damn city had plenty of stray kids. Strays, runners, flight risks. Kids who starved themselves. Kids who cut into their flesh and hated themselves. Kids who were involved in the wrong crowds. Kids who killed themselves. Izuku might be one of those kids, he might be all of those kids. He just knew that you had to blend in with your group and stick to your crowd and never leave it, never run from it if you couldn’t run the full mile.

Yamada had been very concerned and very stormy. His voice had been tempting, terroring. Izuku hated hearing things when the tone shifted like that, negative, beyond comprehension. Because Izuku wasn’t the comprehending-type. He was the keep running until you die type. Nedzu seemed like the control what is controllable until everything is controllable type, like dominoes, like a real system made from one movement. Devour, consumption, loss of revenue, loss of trust, loss of autonomy.

Vomit, don’t vomit, sleep, don’t sleep, eat, don’t eat, beg, don’t beg, bite don’t bite.

(Which means you will be interacting with the staff often as well. This includes me. I hope that we are able to have a proper conversation sometime. Although, I won’t blame you if you choose to avoid it.)

Izuku had said I won’t with a straight face, a lie, a confident lie. And he had broken down and fractured and fissured and seen it all, movement, storylines, background checks, heroes and labs and men and dead thinsg and creatures and quirks and a quirk’s singular moment of power, the rise of it, the fucking functionality of something beyond human comprehension and Izuku’s own comprehension. Because Izuku was weak in the face of something sentient. And he was weak in the face of something that aware, that far ahead.

A mess.

Izuku was always a mess and this situation was a mess, yeah, definitely, but his head hurt and his eyes hurt and he wanted to rip his hair out and demand silence, real silence, demand that no one ever come close to him again and demand that he be let go.

But he didn’t. So he just cried instead.

He sobbed before he was taken to the nurses’ office. He sobbed before Aizawa and Yamada arrived. He sobbed when he was given an ice pack, water, and Tylenol. He sobbed when they asked if he wanted to stay or go. He sobbed when they asked what happened. He sobbed when they offered him food. He sobbed when Yamada rubbed his back and when Aizawa had his hair when he heaved into a pathetic little plastic trash bin. He sobbed when they suggested Inui. He sobbed when they said they would take him back to the apartment, because they didn’t want him to spend the rest of the day—as planned—on campus when he was this keyed up, because something-something, you don’t have to be at UA right now, it’s okay, we can take you back, it’s okay.

So Yamada and Aizawa took him back to the apartment. Day cut short. Day ended. Day dramatic, terrible, fucking awful.

—

Colors that moved in his vision, the sound of someone getting into another bottle. He didn’t do alcohol, didn’t care for it, but when he was hungry enough he would lick what remained off the tip of the glass; the burn and the disgust that came with it, too.

Izuku did that because it made more sense. Sometimes going hungry was a bad idea. Sometimes it wasn’t, and it made him fight harder, bite into flesh and claw at his own skin. He was on fire some nights, dreams alive and nightmares long since buried six feet under; life came and went and the scavengers didn’t give a shit. It was a good thing. He knew it was a good thing.

—

Splinter responded, hours later, hours.

Izuku heard him, saw the colors flicker. Take shape. He saw the world shift, could feel the echo in the back of his skull—it was a sledgehammer, a nail to the temple, he could feel his blood and soul drain right out of him. He could feel the life he lived start cracking open, heard the summoning, felt the ricochet. There were colors and senses.

A flicker.

Izuku screwed his eyes shut, too glossy, and focused only on Splinter’s quirk. It was so far away. It was so fucking far, barely within range, but Splinter always answered when Izuku called him. Always. Because Splinter was fucked up on a pill or two and bought him jackets and often didn’t act wrong, not like Milestone or the ones in slacks, but acted like death and strangers could dance. They could. Splinter had a darkened tongue and sharp eyes and a million things going on, hence the drugs, hence the painkillers, hence his name—

In the image, the quirks thrummed.

Izuku’s quirk crawled forwards, heedy, and Splinter’s replied with practiced ease. There was a mirror. Splinter was looking at a pocket mirror, his eyes no darker than the night. There were glints of icy blue near the pupils.

Splinter, Izuku whispered, in his head. Can you help me? Can you come get me?

Blue eyes, so dark. Splinter’s hair was a mess. There was a fresh wound over his cheeks and nose, a muzzle snap; the skin split and red and raw. Splinter was looking at the mirror, his reflection, and seeing Izuku. His pupils had turned white, almost neon, more like pale mint. Izuku was watching. Splinter knew. Splinter could hear, too, because it was a combination of factors and Izuku’s quirk was all keyed up.

(When you take damage, do you learn to live with it, Izuku?)

A long pause, so long. Splinter was loyal and strong and a killer. He wasn’t a healer. He was a killer. Where are you? He mouthed, to the reflection, and Izuku saw the blurry motion. Splinter might’ve been in a ring a few moments ago. That was why he was bloodied like that.

Please, Izuku said, instead, a begging echo. No need for locations. Please.

And things like this were terrifying. Because Izuku needed to leave, needed to go back home, but he had no clear shot to go home. He was sitting on the floor with his back pressed to the empty bed frame of the bed he had flipped days ago. The door was cracked. There were no cats inside the room. Izuku’s nails were digging into his opposite wrists, and he tensed up every few seconds, he couldn’t fucking think. All he needed to do was get an opening. The window was heavily locked. The window was locked down, completely secure, and Izuku didn’t have a way out.

Unless Splinter helped him.

Splinter had picked up the summon. Had answered the string of useless pleas that the stray kid had wailed.

Because Splinter was a scavenger. And scavengers were sharp and angry and respective and absolute; power and anger and death and the gun to your head, right, and Izuku wasn’t scared of a gun or a knife or a quirk or a needle. He wasn’t scared like the others. He had the scavengers. Splinter answered Izuku’s pleas because their quirks linked up like that, just like Machi’s and Izuku’s, and everyone’s, because if Izuku saw you he saw your quirk and all that you were and he could find you, he could always fucking find you, and he could use you, too.

And Splinter—

What do you need? The man asked, mouthing the question to his reflection.

The wound on his face weeped blindly. Izuku could feel it reflect on his own skin, and he reached up with a hand to claw at the bridge of his nose. Clawed, tore, bit in. Splinter’s eyes were near-black and icy blue and mint-green at the pupils, rounded out, smooth like something uncanny. Izuku’s eye color stood in the middle. Pulsing, moving.

Izuku could hear Yamada and Aizawa’s quirks, hear them flicker and sputter in the hall and the living room.

Movement. Old as time. Quirks. Right? Izuku knew them, felt the thrum of power and knew he could search both of them if he wanted—he didn’t—but he knew he had the chance. A plea, a beg, a sob. His stomach was empty, all tied in knots, and his hands were curled tightly and he was attaching all his energy to Splinter, he was seeing and failing to see and trying. The apartment was static in comparison, spare change. Nothing else.

Quirk, the kid demurred. His heart thundered. Just let me have it for a minute. Let me get out.

Splinter’s eyes were bright, very bright, and Splinter’s quirk was strong.

Colors that moved in his vision, the sound of someone getting into another bottle. He didn’t do alcohol, didn’t care for it, but when he was hungry enough he would lick what remained off the tip of the glass; the burn and the disgust that came with it, too. Izuku did that because it made more sense. Sometimes going hungry was a bad idea. Sometimes it wasn’t, and it made him fight harder, bite into flesh and claw at his own skin. He was on fire some nights, dreams alive and nightmares long since buried six feet under; life came and went and the scavengers didn’t give a shit. It was a good thing. He knew it was a good thing.

(Splinter was elsewhere. He was always elsewhere.)

But Izuku’s were brighter, and his quirk was better.

Sure, kid, Splinter mouthed to him, a permission slip dressed in ivory bone and blood red. Thick, crimson, very dark and very awful. Izuku was good at handling awful.

—

“Do you want to eat something?” Yamada asked him, very quietly.

Izuku shook his head, wrapping his arms around his stomach and sitting there on the couch. He didn’t want to eat anything. He didn’t want—

—

It was late. Izuku had declined dinner, too nervous, too sick. He laid on the mattress, blankets twisted at awkward angles, bed frame discarded and flipped somewhere else.

The kid stuck his fingers under the cuff, pried at the awful material until he could crush his fingers under the band. Two for two; splitting open, feeling the pressure as the material refused to budge more than a centimeter. But izuku was used to stubborn things. He moved with it anyways, curled up tighter—his breaths wouldn’t fit within his chest. He could hear his heartbeat. The kid knew he needed to see the day, see the alleys and go back to where he was supposed to be.

His heart thundered, loud and heavy. Izuku kept his eyes open. He struggled to see, blurry, painful. He could hear the organ rattle in his chest and it was so loud, so painful, so fucking heavy. Seventeen beats. Then eighteen. Then nineteen. Then twenty. Then twenty-one. Then twenty-two. Then—

Please, Izuku begged. Please.

He closed his eyes. He had to close his eyes, he had to. Screwing them shut, his lashes tickling and itching his upper cheek skin—the place where darkness contorted and discolored the most.

Gentle, so gentle, but unlike the kindness of a parent or a loved one.

—

Izuku stared at the dark.

Sharp contrasts: blue, green, pitch black, jet black, bright white, the glimmering colors of red and orange.

Green like his hair, white like his hair.

Splattered all over. Izuku could tell the difference. He could see it, comprehend it. His heart was in his throat as it thundered, jackrabbitted against his esophagus. It bled easily like the rest of him. He wasn’t able to stop the pulse, the thrum or the noise. A scream, a whistle, he heard men’s voices and his mom’s, heard the world change gears as day turned to night and quirks went from alive to asleep. Izuku listened for Splinter’s voice. He heard it, saw it—it went down a corner, behind a makeshift rock, another building Izuku didn’t want to visualize properly. He swallowed. He stared.

The dark moved with him, warning him of what was to come. Slinking through the sludge, up to his knees, and Izuku kept walking. He knew what was dreamy and what wasn’t. He knew his limits.

Seven years old, but not seven anymore. He hadn’t been seven in a long time. Who knew how long. He was fourteen, so it was double that, and it meant Izuku had been without his mom for roughly the same amount of time. He missed her more than anyone else. Just blurry images, a threadbare existence. His head throbbed, and the dark moved back and forth like the tide, like the respective motions that haunted everyone who was dragged out by the current and forced to die in the deep blue. You wouldn’t see anything for miles, for years—your body would be eaten by fish and the ocean predators. Scavengers, right, but in the aquatic form. Not by human construction.

Dark, cold, wet, awful, bleeding, black, pitched, locked, lost, faraway, deep, dark, cold, wet, awful, bleeding, black, pitched—

(A new face, right, look at you in the rubble, kid. I see you. You don’t see anyone else.)

He was moving, he was summoning. Energy had built up in his stomach, a warm spot to dig his hand into, and he could hear all of the static. He was a contorting thing; moving and moving. His movements were not his own, bound by something other than a subconscious mind. Izuku blinked slowly, tasting citrus and bile, smelling rot and the forgotten tang of old booze and dried urine. He couldn’t think. His breaths got stuck in his throat, the words stuck in his head. Home. Mom. Safe. Dead. Not safe. Quirks. No quirks. Don’t use yours. Eyes. No eyes. Mom. Izuku. Not mom. Home. Not home. Safe. Unsafe.

A thousand words. He could read and write and listen. He was really good at listening, even if he didn’t want to. Even if he was halfway somewhere else like his mom had always mumbled about—her tongue black, her eyes reddened, her face so pale. Izuku didn’t know what any of that meant. His books didn’t talk about it. He didn’t know. He never did, not when it came to his mom.

He walked.

He followed the hum of Splinter’s quirk. His hands shook. The world behind him, past his quirk and his eyelids—that one was alive, so loud, the loudest thing to ever exist. Izuku was walking though, legs strong like they were designed to be.

(You can’t see anyone else, she said.)

But he was watching, now, he was seeing it all. Once a kid, now an older one—Izuku could see things if he forced his eyes to open. Through the dark, through the winding electrical currents, past the ghosts of reality that came with smoke and alcohol and blood and lost gambles.

Izuku had to walk, right, the same way all fish needed to swim in the sea to breathe and exist firmly. Swallow fish bones. To have a foundation that was unlike a human’s own, or unlike the graveyard's, or unlike something so far away. Be silent, be so quiet, Izuku. So he was walking, and the word was dark, and there was a bubbling fissure that pressed up against the base of his skull. He could feel warmth drop down his nape, crawl down his spine. It settled in like tendrils, ink splatters, the blood of the undead and those who lost their fights in the arenas.

A dream, he could say, because the sky above him was the deepest orange color and the world around him was black and red and grey; dripping,falling over, melting into mush. Like papier-mâché, lost, so far gone, so far gone already. Barely a few hours in and—

(Liar.)

Dark pools, endless wastelands, the thickening smell of blood and vomit compiling into one.

Izuku had been seven, the world had been millions of years old, and the man in the corner who had no face he knew of was only one hundred and some extra decades. The man had looked at him. Izuku had looked back, stared where his eyes should be, breathed in and out and struggled to understand what he was seeing. What he hadn’t been seeing.

“Where are your eyes?” The boy had asked.

Dark, cold, wet, awful, bleeding, black, pitched, locked, lost, faraway, deep, dark, cold, wet, awful, bleeding, black, pitched—

“I don’t have any,” The man had answered, blurred out by time. His voice was bloody, daggered and thrown over. He was soft. His colors were grey and red. He had offered a hand, long and smooth and strong, like marble, like granite, “I don’t need any.”

“I need mine,” Izuku had said without a hint of hesitation.

Need; a thing of necessity, a thing of usefulness that one could not go without.

Deep pools, dark nights, quiet days, soul-thriving spirits where the wind picked up and people cried and Izuku sobbed with them. Kids like him died young. Kids like him just died. They died. They all died and it came at a price and people never realized it. The world in the dark, the connection Izuku made—he snagged you, your quirk, your gaze, your life. He got a sneak peak to your world like you were an upcoming film about to be released.

“You may keep them,” The man had loomed, and he was not kind, but there was no violence. The stretch of silence ached. It moved. It fluttered. Izuku’s quirk said goodbye.

Izuku had breathed out. “I will.”

A quirk, another minute.

(Do you have a minute?)

Izuku moved through the dark. The alleys splintered apart, twisted and fell through. Poorly made construction, something beyond comprehension. Izuku was dreaming but he was seeing everything, he was taking it all in, he could feel the images burn into his eyes and permanently bleed together. Swirl and move and connect—feel it zap and zipper through him, between bones and joints and pieces—Izuku knew traps and quirks and people and names, knew the game, the way to play, and the directions to take.

The mattress was soft under him, in reality.

NEED TO ANSWER—

“Splinter?” Izuku asked out loud, a mumbled name, and his eyes dashed behind his skin and he felt it crawl, felt all of him shudder and convulse. His head was on fire, burning, battering his scalp. The dream bled open, made him itch like crazy.

Sharp collison.

—THE GUN GOES OFF AND YOU GO OFF WITH IT AND—

(Worthless.)

The darkness consumed. It always did.

It wasn’t between him and anyone else, because Izuku would never fight to choose himself. He didn’t do that, didn’t even bother with something so time-consuming and meticulous. Red or yellow? There was no option for him, no choice. In his mind, he was between a rock and a hard place. In his mind, he was with Machi and her perfume bottles and her kindness and her sharp words and her missing fingers. He knew what her blood tasted like. He knew what everyone’s did, mostly.

He stared, shut his eyes—let the darkness of his eyelids cradle him back to a place he was safe. The mind. The jail. The visionary that someone else gave him. Once he met your eyes, saw them, locked them, he got to keep them.

Izuku kept all of them.

(Don’t you know dead kids are worthless kids?)

The darkness splintered away and cracked in the middle. It was the same pain Izuku had felt before, blue tablets and spilled pill bottles all over the carpet or bloodied concrete. Splinter's eyes, the kickback and the kickstart. Izuku knew what he was supposed to do. He knew. So he walked through the alleyway, followed the chalky blue colored force of nature; colors moving; names calling; eyes flickering and dancing under skin.

No eyes, no quirk—it meant no sight, no dreams, no answers, no eyes.

It meant Izuku wasn’t as useful. It meant he couldn’t pull any weight. It meant he was deadweight, like he was till under the table, still lost, still useless, still as worthless as people said he would be—

Those people weren’t alive, now, he knew it as a fact. The bloodman had never lied.

No one near him had.

(Liar.)

The shadows conjoined at their hips, makeshift people, and the noises got worse. Izuku was on fire again, he felt like he was burning. His sash I had never burned him, but maybe this was what it felt like. He had never burned like this before, warm and warm and warmer and sick and sicker. The most sick you could ever be. Izuku took everything you had to offer and never let any of it go. He took everything that there was to offer and he held onto it. He had to. He had to know and understand and catalogue and know and be aware.

Into the mess he went. And Izuku went easily, because he saw eyes and he hazard phrases and his dreams were simply different reflections of people, of himself and others and old things, older than old things.

The kid turned another corner.

And there was his person, another one to know and care for and follow into death. Splinter was waiting, hands between his knees, sitting on a large crate. There was the angry wound across his face, a double muzzle, a flash bite. He was waiting. Oh, it was almost a relief—being told that you could find someone here, or there, or here, or there, or in this specific area. It was almost a gift.

“Kid,” Splinter said, and his mouth was painted bright blue like the opium and quirk drug tablets.

His eyes met Izuku’s, and in here, it didn’t hurt at all.

Izuku smiled, wide, felt his heart slam through the cage of his ribs. He rushed forward, the sludge of the dream wrapped around his knees. The water rushed to his head, like the rest of the world, and he couldn’t help but let it chase him. He chased others. He haunted them. They knew his name, his real one, the thing that scared people so bad.

A dream, a motion, a summoning; Izuku’s quirk was terrifying. People would be terrified. People were terrified.

Pinpricks, he said.

“Splinter,” Izuku gasped for air, the heat pushing at his face and making his eyes water. Splinter’s hands came to Izuku’s ears, covering them. A gift, an act of mercy. Drugs so far away. No chance to pop a spare pill. “Hey,” Izuku breathed, watery, wobbly. “Splinter.”

“Yeah,” Splinter said, cut and dry, “Hey.”

Because Splinter was up and onto drugs, he bounced through the measures. He was older than Milestone. He was stronger. He was cut out for battles and awful, awful things. He bled into the concrete and smiled with chalky and sharp teeth. Barbed wires were no threat to him. Because Splinter had been a scavenger since birth, since before being a scavenger was worth anything. Because he popped a few and grew in size, his quirk thundering and loud, and he still managed to soften his hands long enough to help Izuku put on a new jacket before a snowstorm. Not enough to save him. Never that. But enough to make this worth it, make life worth it, make the pain fade into a greedy buzz.

Pinpricks—his eyes were pinpricks, dark holes, so small, pivoted and deadly to his chosen audience. His quirk bubbled up like a geyser, and something uncomfortable and powerful settled into Izuku’s stomach.

It was sharp.

(His quirk said hello, and Machi’s quirk said it’s so good to see you.)

“Machi won’t reply to me,” Izuku said, fast and webbed—stuck together, stuck in his throat, because he needed to be hundreds of miles away from all of this. He smacked his palms onto Splinter’s, cupped hands that cupped his ears. His hair was wild. So was his quirk. “She said I need to hurry home. I need to hurry. I need a way out.”

“Yeah,” The man said again, like he knew, like this wasn’t just going to be a blip in his consciousness when he woke up from the dream and realized that he didn’t know what happened.

Splinter would only know once his quirk refused to—

“Please,” Izuku begged, another round of desperation. “I can’t stay here. I can’t.”

And it had been too long already, and his quirk was desperate to leave, and Izuku was inclined to listen to it this time. He could hear the world. He could hear everyone’s quirks. The nearest, the closest. He could be faster and better than everyone else, but not if he stayed with heroes.

Splinter was looking at him. Izuku noticed, now, that the man’s eyes were completely empty. This was a void of existence, no real presence could maintain itself here. Only quirks. Only records. Only thundering hearts and wobbly breaths and rattling lungs and shaky hands and the mirrored images of people that were no longer close within Izuku’s greedy reach. Splinter’s hands were cold, pressure less against Izuku’s.

Things like this often were.

“Yeah, sure, kid,” He said, slipping through the cracks. “It’s no place for a kid. It’s no place for you.” The wound on his face weeped, and fresh rolls of blood swashed over his tanned features. “Take what you need.”

Oh.

Oh, god.

Like men and women in the crowds, in the back. Blood everywhere. Blood all over. Hair missing, eyes unfocused, Izuku’s quirk roaring and coming to life after being inactive for so long. It was right there. Power. It was right there, and it was holding Izuku as they spoke, because Splinter wasn’t here, Splinter was a ghost of a man who wasn’t sober enough to ever speak truthfully—his quirk was here, his quirk was power, and it cracked open and fractured so easily, so easily.

The kid breathed in, breathed out. Splinter’s quirk cried. Splinter’s quirk cried when Izuku squeezed its hands, squeezed and moved and split open like a reflection.

Izuku cried, too.

—

A sharp sound, very sharp, very familiar.

—

Izuku was hiding.

He knew it wasn’t normal for other kids to hide, really, but his mom had asked him. She had sounded desperate. That woman could sound like so many things at once. Izuku knew when to reply, when to run, when to stay still. To blink, see a world so far away, blood and smoke and a bleeding face.

His mom had asked him to hide, pack his bag and scurry into the hallway closet. Not under his bed this time, not under his desk or the kitchen table. She told him to hide in the hallway.

That was where he was.

He didn’t want to think about what was happening outside the doors of the hallway, the places he couldn’t go, the people he couldn’t meet anymore.

It was dark. Izuku would say it was quiet, but it really wasn’t. He could hear his mom moving about, echoing over the kitchen tiles and past the table and through the hallway. She didn’t open the door, didn’t knock. He stayed where he was, pressing his back to the wall, clutching his backpack like it could hide him from anyone who slid the closet door open. It wouldn’t. It couldn't. But that was okay. Kids didn’t hide like this, but sometimes his mom—sometimes she told him it made the most sense. To hide, to run. She said she would get him once it was safe.

But with his mom, it was hard to know what she meant by safe. Sometimes it meant being quiet. Sometimes it meant sitting there and listening to her mumble incoherently about what it was like before Hisashi said he would kill her, then take Izuku.

(One day you’ll be number one.)

He didn’t know how to handle it, anymore, how to process the ache that came with it. Izuku could remember what Hisashi was like.

It wasn’t hard. All the photo albums his mom took with them made a hasty picture—married young, young in the eyes of everyone else, swept off her feet, an aspiring career, a short-tempered but charming man and then boom, a little boy, too, only three years after they were married. A little lost, a little soon? Nothing like Hisashi, nothing at all, but Izuku remembered smiling at that man before it went wrong, before smoke meant pain.

His mom didn’t look at the photo albums anymore. She didn’t like it when Izuku did, either, but that wasn’t his fault. Sometimes it just happened. He didn’t know what else to do when he wasn’t writing, hiding, or waiting for her to come home.

So he looked at the old history.

Sometimes he would feel daring enough to ask about the people in there—the ones he couldn’t recognize, couldn’t remember. It was only a year or two ago, but Izuku was already lost—he hadn’t seen their eyes for some time. His own eyes hurt too often to make the world stand out. It was over-simplified, sometimes too bright and too colorful. Sometimes not enough.

There was a family in some of the pictures. He knew that was Kacchan’s family, knew that the blonde kid was Kacchan, the woman his mother’s friend, and then the brown haired man being the husband—but that wasn’t enough. He couldn’t hear their voices. He didn’t feel their presence anywhere, couldn't understand it. They had quirks, he could barely remember, but it was like a bad dream. A dream he couldn't get rid of. A dream from before. A dream his mom couldn’t soothe him from.

It was just that his eyes were worse, now. They weren’t always. But a few months ago, he could have been able to read the clock in the bathroom perfectly. Now he couldn’t.

Part of it had to be from his dreams, from the existences he saw in another person’s gaze. He didn’t know what it meant. He knew it was a quirk, his quirk—but his mom wouldn't tell him how he had it or why. He didn’t have anyone else to ask. He couldn't talk to anyone. It was just him and his mom. She loved him. She said so, promised it. Her tongue would be black. Her hands would shake. She would come home late, now, smelling of smoke and ash, blood and bruises—he could close his eyes and see her seething with a man in front of her, pale and black-haired, smoke pouring from his mouth. Hisashi must have dyed his hair.

She came home and she said she loved him, even if she no longer liked Izuku looking at her eyes. They moved houses because she was trying to protect him. He didn’t know how else to say it, how else to put it.

So he hid in the closet, kept his eyes open despite how he couldn't see anything and it made the pain worse.

His eyes didn’t always hurt.

His mom didn’t know that yet. He hadn’t told her. He didn’t want to, really. He didn’t want to tell her he was starting to only see shapes and sniveling beasts, the sounds that came from people he hadn’t seen in months—if not years—since they moved. From angry people. What are dreams like? From people who hunted and chased, baring their teeth to his mom down the block, down the hallway in the hospital. Why are my dreams always so real, mom? From people who smoked heavily, who looked Inko up and down and smiled like it wouldn't last.

(Him looking at his mom right before she blew out a candle. He had said, “I know that dad is trying to kill you, mom.”)

It was why she didn’t like it when he looked at faces, he guessed.

Eye contact, maybe. The understanding that came when his pupils were the sizes of pin pricks and her mouth would open and she wouldn’t say anything, just open her mouth and freeze like she had no response. Just an ache, a feeling.

Izuku was hiding.

(“Izuku,” She had looked right through him, eyes dilating. “I want to know how you know, Izuku. Will you tell me?”)

By this point, Izuku was really good at it.

He always kept his bag packed. It wasn’t like he went to school, so his All Might themed bag didn’t have any other use. He left it as it was, had to—pencils and books and some medications and gauze, a few of his journals, his scarce pen collection. A few photos he took out of the photo album labeled Family Pictures, written on a piece of scotch tape with a black sharpie.

So his bag was always packed. The closet was always waiting for him. The apartment was quiet, an empty existence. He hadn’t left it in five months. His mom left frequently, now, a pattern that he couldn’t actually keep track of anymore.

He was scared.

Izuku could say it, think about it as much as he wanted. He was scared. It made his world flip, the taste of all his food went sour and acrid.

Sometimes he wouldn’t eat. Sometimes his mom would make dinner with food that had already gone bad, and Izuku and her would just stare at it. Do you want to eat? Izuku would be hungry. His mom would be hungry, too. No, Izuku would say. It’s okay, mom. You can have it. And she would cry. She would cry for her, for him, for the fact that they had to do this again and again.

(“I see them in my dreams,” Izuku had whispered. “Mom, I don’t think dad forgives you. I don’t think—think anyone does. Mom. I see them all the time.”)

The dreams he no longer talked about.

Eight years old, already aware something was so wrong. It wasn’t normal. In the books he read, the papers said that children should be in school and should be safe. They should have a steady and stable environment. Food, clothes, shelter, parents or some kind of guardian, safety. A guarantee. But he didn’t have that. Izuku had his mom. He had his mom and his journals, his quirk, all his headaches and dizzy fits. The nights where he would vomit because the food was bad, vomit because his mom tugged too hard on his hair when she dyed it green, like hers, refusing to let the white come through.

Her mistakes. Her horrors. He let her dye it, covering up her history and his reality like it would erase the fact that it had happened, that Hisashi wasn’t the other half of Izuku’s blood.

He let her.

Izuku shuddered, pressed himself into the corner of the closet. His dreams weren’t just dreams. Dreams weren’t supposed to be real, proven facts. Life. Dreams were just things your head made up. That was what the books said, all of them, and yet he would close his eyes and see fire. He would close his eyes and see alcohol, the thing his mom sometimes drank. He would see a man with white hair, freckles near his eyes and nowhere else. A few on his hands. Izuku would hear his voice, rumble and ache. Izuku would never know where he saw this man, when—but he lived in Izuku’s skull and it was a constant ache, a fever shortage.

This had to be the man that Izuku’s father wanted dead.

(If you take my son from me, I’ll fucking kill you.)

“Baby?” His mom whispered, and her voice didn’t sound like hers, not really, but her quirk was the same and Izuku screwed his eyes shut when the door rattled. So quiet, so strange. He missed the old house, even when it was never theirs to begin with. Her voice was so soft. “Are you in there?”

It rattled, slid open slowly. Dim light poured in, Izuku could tell, but all he did was bow his head and bury it into his backpack.

“Izuku,” His mom hiccuped, “There you are, it’s okay.”

It wasn’t. Izuku already knew that it wasn’t. It was hard to believe things were okay when he remembered. He remembered everything he said he didn’t. He remembered everything he knew his mom hoped he didn’t. He remembered what she had said about him. He remembered what her husband had said, too.

(He’s not yours, Inko would always shout, always scream, he’s not yours!)

He hiccuped, too, because for all of the things going on in his head he still loved his mom. She went down on her knees, extended her arms and pulled him into her embrace.

“It’s okay,” She soothed, like she always did, “I have you, I have you. You’re safe. It’s okay.”

It wasn’t.

—

When they come looking for you, you run, a man had told him in the night, angry and bitter after he got woken up from Izuku vomiting and shivering in the kitchen. You take nothin’ with you, and you fuckin’ run. Don’t come back ‘til they’re gone.

—

Set the stage: a runner, a quirk, a borrowed quirk, a fever dream which wasn’t a dream at all.

Izuku’s eyes burned.

He glanced at the bedroom door, his heart thundering in his chest. Just to make sure he could do this, just to make sure he stood a chance at running instantly—he had a limited time, he only had as long as he had looked into Splinter’s eyes—he got up from the mattress. He didn’t have shoes. He only had socks on, sweatpants again, a loose shirt that had mid length sleeves. Dark green, almost like his hair.

The kid swallowed thickly. He stepped slowly towards the door, reached out with his clammy hands and swung the knob to peel into the hall. No one else was there. The heroes’ quirks were in the living room.

Izuku gnawed on his lip.

He tasted red.

He imagined Machi’s face, then Jill’s, then Milestone’s, then Toucan’s, then Yuki’s, then everyone else’s. He thought about Splinter’s fucked up jaw and red wound. So red. Really bad. He thought about rivers and store aisles and empty cigarette cartons. Izuku carefully shut the door, pressing it silently back into the frame and notch. It didn’t creak or squeak. It was quiet.

Izuku thought about Nedzu’s quirk. He thought about using it. He thought about closing his eyes and summoning all his fucking domination into one category: overpowering.

He dismissed the idea.

Backed away from the bedroom door, slowly. His heart thundered. His footsteps were near-silent, near perfect, and the ache in his brain started seething and foaming again. Dragging, dragging, dragging. He thought about the heroes. He thought about their limited understanding and their limited kindness. He thought about them, for a long minute, because they offered him food without strings and careful touch without the hiss of violence before or after. He thought about Shuuzenji, too, thought about colors and lights and treatment plans and blood money and stolen shoes and lost clothes and lost kids and missing kids and dead kids. He thought about himself, murky, his scattered and ugly reflection.

Izuku took another step away from the door, its looming presence, and then turned his eyes to the window.

The curtains covered it.

His eyes were burning, and the world was starting to burn and crisper at the edges, too. I need to leave. I need to go. I need to leave. The mantra in his head was loud. The hum of the air, of static, of the fan—all that rivaled the noise in his head. He scratched at his nape, then the stitch lines, then the whipstitches, then clawed at his hairline and tore at the skin that was discolored and marred from abuse. Abuse, because violence in that manner had never been for anything other than violence. That was why it was abuse. Not because it had hurt him, or had been wrong—people who talked like that just didn’t understand.

Izuku inched to the window. He pulled the curtains, jerkily, to the side.

Parted them.

The glass loomed, reflecting his pale and contorted face. His eyes were discolored again, red at the edges of the white-gooey part. Tears leaked out steadily. He refused to sniffle. He refused. His irises were deep green and flashing chalky blue; his pupils pinpricked and ugly, so ugly, so awful. He really hated himself. Seeing himself was the worst thing to come of this, right, excluding the obvious factor of being caught for fifteen whole fucking days.

He looked down, away from the glass and the darkness. His wrists waited for him. The bruised and the agitated. He stared. Izuku needed to get rid of the cuff, he needed to—

The kid moved his hand, placed his left hand on his right wrist and curled his fingers around the skin and part of the cuff.

His skin went raw, tender, splitting open in a jagged line. Right next to it, the material split. It cracked in half. He licked his lips. His entire body buzzed, screamed, and he was screaming with it and everything was twisting and foaming and he could feel Splinter’s quirk cry with every use, feel the energy drain. Only a few hours available, only a few hours available.

(Six hours, twenty-three minutes, thirteen seconds.)

Twelve, ten, nine, eight, seven, six—

He pried his fingers under the material and clawed at it. Feral, like an animal. Devious, angry, desperate. His heart was thundering and he was in a time crunch. He should have done this earlier. He should have done this earlier. He should have. He didn’t. Izuku had been too scared and too stupid to understand the danger, because danger wasn’t something he was used to seeing unless it existed in the streets.

The cuff popped up, cracked a little more. It stung. The skin underneath was red and irked, agitated, and had raised goosebumps. He dropped the cuff onto the mattress, breathing harshly.

He felt out of his body. He was.

There was a giant crack splitting through his arm, angrily, and he drew his hands away from each other and stumbled another inch closer to the glass. His breath fogged over the surface, his breath sour, and he tasted bile and blood and felt the energy of it all come to lick at his wounds. Salty, sour, awful. His palm started to crack. Split right open, actually, and the skin just melted away. The rush was really bad, really gory. He wondered why he didn’t do this days ago. He wondered why he didn’t just—

Well, enough damage to the body. He cupped his wrists, held both down with the opposing hands. Waited to count the damage. Splinter had told him to take as much as possible without dropping dead or unconscious. This was enough. This was plenty. This would have to be plenty. He pulled away, breaths watery.

Milestone would heal him, y’know. Milestone would have to.

(Can’t run. I can’t run anymore, not like you can.)

Izuku reached out and placed his palms to the glass. Quietly, he begged. Do this quietly.

And it was, oh, god, it was so quiet and so easy. It was actually crazy how easy it was to place his skin to the glass and lean forwards and watch it splinter under his touch. His name in his mouth, on his tongue. The glass falling, clattering down the outdoor side of the window sill. None of the glass made it into the house. It broke off in gentle pieces, fell and tumbled away, and Izuku felt fucking elated.

“Oh,” He breathed, and he breathed and breathed and breathed and breathed.

It was 11:39pm. He knew it was 11:39pm because he had looked at the small alarm clock on the desk and had read the numbers until they were burned into his eyelids. It was late at night. It was almost the sixteenth day. Izuku was going to go home.

“Oh,” Izuku tasted the air.

He tasted it.

Splinter’s quirk was self-explanatory, from the man’s alias. Splinter. It applied to the body and others, but others was limited to inanimate objects, and couldn’t damage things too badly unless the actual body was also that damaged.

An equivalent exchange, of sorts. Lesser than or equal to.

It cracked you open and made you raw and tender, made you withstand damage as long as you intook damage. It made you last forever, a small piece of power—and yet you would always be in pain. Enough pain to split, over and over and over. Hundreds of times. If you outlasted your opponent you wouldn’t be able to outlast yourself. It was fighting a losing battle at all hours of the day. Splinter was a long-made champion in fight rings because he could last for hours in one battle. Blood to blood. Bone to bone. A ripped open esophagus or a punctured lung.

Izuku had connected with him a long time ago. Synchronized and stole, took the pills and took the easy way out to match. Splinter let him. Splinter had been told to let him, after all, because Izuku’s quirk made him terrifying even though he was young.

The labs made him last forever, too, with or without the quirk’s assistance.

Izuku hobbled in the broken glass, staring at the red on his hands. Oh, god. And he thought about his mom, and her blackened eyes, and her blackened tongue, and her late night grocery runs. And the blackout curtains. And the candles. And the All Might books. He thought about the rubble, the fires, the cars, the bad men, the scavengers. He thought about Splinter, now, because Splinter’s quirk was the one dragging Izuku through the motions.

Climb, Izuku told himself. Climb out the window.

He did.

The kid barely wasted a second more, and then he was swinging his leg through the splintered glass and pushing out. The night air immediately hit him, cold and breezy, and he opened his mouth and tasted the grit and city pollution. He was being very quiet. The glass cracked under his palms, digging into the already bitten and fragile skin. He gnawed on his lips, tasted copper. He breathed. He tried not to.

He swung himself out of the sill, no rooftop or awkward clutch to be offered to him. Splinter’s quirk thrummed under his skin, warned him with blood and spit, and his own quirk was crying and sobbing in sync. He clutched the glass. It dug into him like a stray dog’s teeth.

Halfway out. He might fall. Izuku wasn’t worried about dropping—

The kid could see the street below, the sky above. It was so dark, and so awful, and so loud. There was noise all around. Izuku counted all the nearby quirks, heard them clamor and snore and sputter and shudder. He heard his own. He heard the heroes’ quirks, too.

Barely a lick of guilt.

Izuku bit his lip, hard, and he stared at the stars for a second then glanced at the building’s wall and leaned further out. Pretty high up. He didn’t know how many floors he was up, how far the drop would be, but it would be high enough to hurt him. Or kill him. That too, if he landed wrong, or gained enough momentum as he plummeted, as he bled out. Maybe punctured a lung or two or such or so.

(Don’t you know that dead kids are worthless kids?)

Oh. That was the thing, right? If he fell, he died, and if he died, then he wouldn’t be able to go home. He wouldn’t make it if he died. He wouldn’t make it if he died. Drop, He breathed, and he caught the air in his throat and snapped his jaws and felt sick.

He stared.

The colors moved. Everything blurred together. His arms hurt, one was bleeding profusely. He smiled copper, felt the glass push further into his hand. One leg out the window, one still on the floor of the bedroom. No shoes. No shoes. Just his body, the spare clothes. Nothing else to bring with him, nothing else. He needed to leave. He needed to leave, and this was his only shot, right, when would he get another shot?

When would he?

When the gun came out or the heroes decided he needed to be put down?

When?

(Right now. Right fucking now. Right now.)

He needed to leave the heroes behind. He needed to go back home, to the townhouse, to the scavengers, to the people who made sure he didn’t die of whatever the fuck back when the ceiling came down on him and he’ll became reality with every means to stay that way. The people. His people. He needed to leave Aizawa and Yamada and their cats and their other hero friends and everyone else involved. Izuku just needed to leave.

Izuku leaned forwards. He lifted his other leg. His eyes were wide. Everything he was seeing told him the same outcome. Everything. And he knew it, and he felt it, and he barely spared a glance at his arm—it was red and awful and it was a jagged peak and he could barely feel the tendons, barely move it, barely understand it. The kid moved, inched again. The broken glass screeches, louder now, and Izuku’s heart thundered. If he died, he died. The scavengers didn’t know. They wouldn't know because they never sent backup. But Machi would know, probably. Because Machi knew these things.

He blinked.

He tasted ash, copper, nausea. He tasted freedom, felt the breeze crawl over his face and crush his nose and then his windpipe and his eyes and make his head burst open like a water balloon.

(Right now.)

Izuku moved his other leg over the window sill and slipped.